Some questions

[Jeffrey E. Sussna]

It is not reasonable to ask the user to figure it out. RDF, along with much
of XML, is not really suited (or at least in RDF's case, intended) for
direct human access. Remember that the goal of RDF is to make it easy for
MACHINES to process metadata. Users should be able to use tools that hide
the details of RDF.

Jeff

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
> [mailto:owner-xml-dev at ic.ac.uk]On Behalf Of
> Joe Lapp
> Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 1999 3:53 PM
> To: xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
> Subject: Re: Some questions
>
>
> At 03:46 PM 12/1/99 -0800, Tim Bray wrote:
> >Because the same data structures and usage patterns keep
> coming back across
> >wide ranges of metadata applications, even though the world
> isn't about
> >to agree on common vocabularies.  So there are huge gains to
> be had from
> >a common data model and transfer syntax. -Tim
>
> That's a very strong motivation.  But we have to balance that
> with another
> very strong motivation: making the documents easy to understand by the
> people who need to work with them.  By designing your own
> doctype you can
> tailor the structure and the language to suit the target audience.
>
> RDF may be simple at heart, but is it reasonable to ask the
> average user to
> figure it out, to expect that the average user of metadata
> will even be
> able to grok the abstractions?  I may be reiterating your earlier
> sentiment, but I worry that the abstractions are as much an
> impediment as
> the spec and the syntax.
>
> --
> Joe Lapp                     (Looking for some good people to
> Senior Engineer               help create XML technologies that
> http://www.webMethods.com     connect businesses to businesses
> jlapp at webMethods.com          over the web.)
>
> xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post,
> mailto:xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
> Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and
> on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1
> To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
> unsubscribe xml-dev
> To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the
> following message;
> subscribe xml-dev-digest
> List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa at ic.ac.uk)
>
>


xml-dev: A list for W3C XML Developers. To post, mailto:xml-dev at ic.ac.uk
Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/xml-dev/ and on CD-ROM/ISBN 981-02-3594-1
To unsubscribe, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
unsubscribe xml-dev
To subscribe to the digests, mailto:majordomo at ic.ac.uk the following message;
subscribe xml-dev-digest
List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa at ic.ac.uk)